One quick way to speed up your daily workflow in After Effects CC is to become a master in how to quickly group and select multiple layers for animation. In this tutorial, we're going to better organize this multi-layered composition by dividing layers into groups using labels and some keyboard commands. The composition we're working on is a pre-visualization for a smartphone app. And so, the aspect ratio is more vertical than horizontal. Just so we can see all of the layers all at once and the Composition panel at the same time I'm going to come up to the upper left corner of the Composition panel and click right on the name Composition which is the tab of that panel, making sure to hold your mouse button down as you drag, drag the panel down to the Bottom panel and then go over to the right until you see the trapezoid. Then you can let go and then hover over the top part of that panel that we just relocated and click and drag up once you get the double arrows. I know this might look a little strange but now I can see all the layers here and I can see their visual representation right here in the Timeline. Let's work from the top down. I'll turn the visibility of Layer 1 off and on and I can see that these layers with the letter B are the buttons that are on the top. So, I'll select Layer 1 and I'll hold Shift on my keyboard and select Layer 3 and by holding Shift between my first and last selection any layers in between will automatically get selected as well. To group these visually go to the left side of the Timeline and you'll see Label Colors. Click on any one of the labels and let's change the color to Orange. Select Layer 4 and if you look in the Composition panel you'll see control handles around that layer. So, that looks like a title and if I click on the next one, okay, that's the Menu bar that pops up. This is the actual bar and then this is the next title: Hiking. So, I have Hiking and Mountain Climbing. Okay, so let's go through and select all the titles. I'll select Layer 4 but instead of holding Shift this time I'll hold Ctrl on Windows or Command on the Mac and select Hiking next, Mountain Climb next, Ice Climb after that and then Camp. Let's group these together in the Timeline. Click on Layer 16 and drag up and then let go of your mouse just underneath Layer 4. Let's give these layers a custom label as well. Click on one of the labels and this time let's change it to Dark Green. Since the Menu Lines appear to be on their own I'm going to move them all the way to the top of the layer hierarchy and I'll just leave them their original layer color. Let's go down and select Layer 10. I'll put all these bars into a group, so I'll select the top bar. I'll hold Ctrl, select not the Hike image, we will select the Hike Bar, MC Bar, IC Bar and Camp Bar. Rather than grouping these all in a row let's leave them alone and just give them their own custom label color. I'll click on the Label Color for 17 and I'll choose Red. For these last few layers let's use the Select Label Group function, click on the label and choose Select Label Group and it will select all those layers with the same color. To deselect any layers that have already been selected hold down Ctrl on Windows or Command on the Mac and then click on the layer you'd like to deselect. Now, let's give this group a custom color and change its label color to Yellow. Finally, before I finish working with this project I'm going to go up to my workspaces and right next to the Standard workspace I'll click on its Menu bars and I'll say Reset to Saved Layout. So, assigning custom label colors can go a long way to making your Timeline look much more organized and presentable and one of the nice things if you get to layers that aren't in a continuous order you can always use the Label Color to select the Label Group.

What you learned: Select and label multiple layers in a composition

To select multiple layers that are in a continuous stack in the timeline, select the top layer, hold Shift, and select the bottom layer. This selects both the top and bottom layers, and all layers in between.

To select multiple layers that are not in a continuous stack, select a layer; then hold Control (Windows) or Command (macOS) and select additional layers in the timeline. This will skip over (and not select) other layers in the stack.

With multiple layers selected, click the colored square to the left of any one of the selected layers in the timeline to change the label color of all the selected layers. Changing the label color of multiple layers offers a visual method of grouping layers.

To select all layers with the same color label in the composition, click the square to the left of one layer in the timeline to open the drop-down Label menu and choose Select Label Group.

Animate groups of layers with Pre-compose

Use Pre-compose to animate groups of layers.

Using the pre-compose command in After Effects CC gives you the ability to clean up a composition that contains a bunch of layers while still maintaining the flexibility of having access to all of the original layers in your composition. If you look in our project in the Timeline I have 10 separate layers. And I've already gone through the process of applying groups to the layers I'd like to animate together. So, to quickly select our Layer Groups let's go to the Label for Layer 1 and click and choose Select Label Group. Notice these are all the Menu elements at the top of my screen. Go to the Layer menu and go down and choose Pre-compose... Let's create a new composition name called Top_Pre-compose. Go ahead and click OK when you're finished and notice all those layers collapse into this one Pre-composition Layer. If I toggle the visibility off and on notice they all appear and disappear together. Let's repeat the same function for the next group. Click on the Label for Layer 2. Select the Label Group, go up under the Layer menu and choose Pre-compose... We'll call this Bottom_Pre-comp and click OK. Now notice I've got a bunch of compositions in my Project panel, so I'll click on my first Pre-comp in the top of the Project panel and I'll hold the Ctrl key on Windows or the Command key on the Mac and select the other Pre-compose Composition and just drag them both down to a new folder and we'll call this Pre-comps. Okay. Now to create animation I want the Menus to slide in from left to right, so I'll start with Layer 1. Since I already like how the layer is positioned I'll move my Current Time Indicator to 1 second in the Timeline and then I'll press P to open the position and add a keyframe by clicking on the Stopwatch. Let's move the Current Time Indicator back to the beginning of the Timeline and scrub to the left on the X parameter to get the Menu off the screen on the left. If we press the Spacebar you'll see it's a rather linear animation. So, I'll stop playback by pressing the Spacebar again and I'll click on the word Position to select both Keyframes. Go ahead and right-click on either of the Keyframes, go to the Keyframe Assistant and choose Easy Ease. Now when we go back and watch a preview again, it's going to slide in and stop with a much more natural motion. Let's copy those keyframes onto the other Pre-comp. Let's click on the word Position to make sure those Keyframes are selected and press Ctrl + C to copy, let's go to Layer 2 and press I to move our Current Time indicator to the endpoint of the Layer. Press Ctrl + V to paste or Command + V on the Mac. If we preview this animation with the Spacebar you can see they both slide in at the same time. To offset the animation, I'll stop playback and move this second layer to the right and I'll hold Shift as I start to drag and it'll snap to the second Keyframe. Now when we preview you can see one comes in and then the next one comes in. I'll press the Spacebar to stop playback. And I want to tell you the most important thing about Pre-composing. We still have access to the original layers. So, if I want to open up the (Bottom Pre-comp), I'll just double click directly on the Pre-comp here in the Timeline and it automatically opens that Pre-composition. So, if I wanted to create animation in here I could and whatever happens in this Composition, also flows through to this main Composition. So, Pre-compose lets you animate a bunch of layers together as though they were combined in one single layer but it still gives you access to the original layers that make up the Pre-composition.

What you learned: Group layers using Pre-compose

Select multiple layers in the Timeline using either Shift, Control (Windows) or Command (macOS), or the Label menu’s Select Layer Group command.

From the main menu, choose Layer > Pre-compose.

Double click on a Pre-composition in the timeline to open and view its layers.

Use the tabs at the top of the Timeline panel to switch back to the main composition.

Drive animation with null objects

Use null objects to drive animation of multiple layers.

In this tutorial, we're going to use Null Objects to bring control in situations that might seem otherwise complex. To start let's go down to the Timeline and click once to make sure the Timeline panel is active, then press the Spacebar to preview the animation. And we have a little town animation where all the elements are fanning out from the center. And while this animation is nice I'd like to make it a little more dynamic by adding some scale and make them actually pop up in the middle of the scene. So, let's press the Spacebar to stop playback. Make sure your Current Time Indicator is anywhere down the Timeline other than frame 0;00;00;00. We want them to be fanned out a little bit. Go to the bottom of the Timeline, click and drag up to the left drawing a lasso around all the layers so they're all selected. Press S to open the Scale and just scrub on the Scale Parameter of any of the layers and notice this is problematic because all of these layers are scaling around their own center point and I would like to actually maintain this animation where they're fanning out and not have them accidentally floating through the scene. Press Ctrl + Z on Windows or Command + Z on the Mac to undo the last change, then press S to hide the Scale Parameter. This is a case for Null Objects. We could pre-compose all these layers but I still want to have access to the layers in the same composition. So, what I'm going to do is go up to the Layer menu and then choose New, Null Object. When the null is placed in the scene it's just placed at the center of the project and the null’s anchor point is in the upper left corner of the Null Object. Whenever you reposition the null you want to make sure and line up the anchor point of the null with the anchor point of the scale that you plan to perform. So, let's slide the null and place it down at the bottom of this center building. Now we can go down to the Timeline select Layer 1 and press P to open the Position parameter. I know the center of the composition is 640.0 pixels on the X, so I'll change that parameter to 640.0 on the X and I know that's the center of the comp. So, this looks good. Now what we need to do is have all the other layers follow this layer and this is where Parenting comes into play. If you don't see the Parent column active in the Timeline go to the layer name and right-click or control-click if you're on the Mac and go to the Columns here and make sure the Parent column is active. All right, now since I want all of these layers to follow [Null 1] I'll go to the label for Layer 2, click on it and choose Select Label Group and all the layers will be selected. Now we can go to the Parent column and this icon here is called a Pick Whip. Click on that icon and drag it towards the [Null 1] and just have it point directly on [Null 1] and let go. Now select Layer 1 or Null object and press S for the Scale and if you scrub on the scale now everything is going to move together. So, let's move our Current Time Indicator back to the beginning of the Timeline and change the Scale Parameter to a setting of 0.0. Select Layer 2 and press the U key to open any animated properties. This way we can time the scale change to the position change of the other layers. Click on the Stopwatch for the Scale parameter in Layer 1 to set a keyframe. Then press K on your keyboard to move down the Timeline to the other visible keyframe. Let's change the scale up to a value of 135.0% and press Enter. Now if we scrub you'll notice not only are the elements sliding but the layer is actually scaling up and the animation is scaling up all together. Now since these are vector layers I'm going to select all the Illustrator CC layers one more time by going to the label for Layer 2 and choose Select Label Group and in the Switches area if you don't see these Switches Toggle Switches / Modes until you see the Switches. Click the second Switch in from the left that's Continuously Rasterize. Having Continuously Rasterize active for the Illustrator CC layers will keep them nice and sharp regardless of their scale. Let's preview our animation. Move the Current Time Indicator back to the beginning of the Timeline, click anywhere outside the layers to deselect them all and press the Spacebar to preview the animation. Now I know that scale is rather linear and if you want to go ahead and select these keyframes and apply some ease to them, please feel free. The most important thing to remember is the next time you run into an animation problem you might want to consider if Null Objects combined with Parenting might be the solution.

What you learned: Animate multiple layers

A null object is a layer that does not render in the composition but is visible in the Timeline. You can link a null object using Parenting to create animation in the linked layers.

To link a null object to drive animation of multiple layers as a parent:

Select Layer > New > Null Object to add a null object in the composition.

If the parent column isn’t visible in the Timeline, open the timeline menu in the tab at the top of the Timeline to the right of the composition name and select Columns > Parent. The panel will be visible in the Timeline whenever a check mark appears next to the name Columns in the timeline menu.

Select all the layers you want to control in the Timeline and use the pick-whip in the Parent column from any of the selected layers to point to the Null and link those layers to the parent.

Animate the null object to animate all layers linked to that null.

Any layer linked to a parent layer is called the child of the parent layer.